


[if you peel away the skin] is there anybody there?

by gaygentdanvers



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Depersonalization, Dissociation, F/F, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 04:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17399873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaygentdanvers/pseuds/gaygentdanvers
Summary: pur·ga·to·ry/pərɡəˌtôrē/nouna temporary place or state of suffering.





	[if you peel away the skin] is there anybody there?

**Author's Note:**

> y'all know that one scene in brooklyn nine nine where captain holt is writing a speech and all it says is "paaiiinnn..." anyways yeah that's basically this fic.

you don’t get to die  
and be reborn the same.  
you come back,  
but you come back wrong.  
this is the price you pay  
for resurrection.  
  
— nathaniel orion g.k.  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Floating aimlessly in the in-between is where Sam seems to live these days. Not quite a human, but not exactly a Kryptonian either. At least she doesn’t _feel_ Kryptonian, not like Supergirl or Superman do. Nevertheless, she tries to make space for herself in the cage that’s entrapped her, because if hovering, lost in the middle, is where she has to be in order to not stray too far to the other side — to _Reign’s_ side — then so be it.  
  
  
Sometimes, she still feels like she’s teetering on the edge of being the villain herself, before she manages to shake herself out of it and remind herself that if she really wanted to try, she has the potential to be a _hero_ now.  
  
  
_[Foolish thief,_ Reign seems to taunt her whenever she thinks about it, even now that the Worldkiller is gone from the confines of Sam’s mind. _These powers were never meant for you.]  
  
__  
_ National City after the Worldkillers is in shambles, but it pretends not to be. That’s the thing about survivors, Sam thinks, as she looks around. They get to keep on living, even while their city is in ruins.  
  
  
She can picture it already, everyone moving onto the next near-Apocalypse that descends upon National City as though Reign never happened. After all, that’s what happened with the Daxamite invasion the year before, and Myriad the year before _that_. People — they have to move on fast, from fearing one threat to fearing the next without getting a break, forcing themselves to forget about what's been lost in order to make room for new grief.  
  
  
But Sam— Sam will always remember.  
  
  
The DEO keeps her under observation for a few weeks after she’s separated, and that’s fine. She gets it; they’re just trying to determine whether she’s well enough to go home and be with Ruby. But then Sam sees the matching expressions of concern on Alex, Lena, and Kara’s faces, almost like they’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and—  
  
  
_Oh,_ she realizes with a sharp jolt. _They think I’ll still be a threat._ _  
__  
  
_They’re proved wrong, in the end. Reign is gone for good, and so is the insatiable hunger for executing justice in the form of executing people, because Lena’s plan worked, and Sam is supposed to feel better. She’s supposed to feel normal again, like she can go home and make dinner and cheer Ruby on at soccer games and go to work as Lena’s CFO as though nothing’s changed. She’s supposed to feel _good_ , relieved, that Reign is gone and she can be _Samantha Arias_ again.  
  
  
Instead, she just wants to disappear.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
“Are you cold?” Lena asks her on the drive home from the DEO, and Sam glances down to see that her hands are trembling where they sit in her lap. She clenches them into a fist and shakes her head, staring out the window at the bright city lights passing her by.  
  
  
“Sam,” Lena calls out quietly, the name just barely a whisper between them. “Are you alright?”  
  
  
Sam closes her eyes. She remembers seeing Lena in the forest with Kara and Alex, the way her heart had clenched painfully in her chest at the thought that _oh no, no, no,_ she had killed them all too.  
  
  
Sometimes she can still feel the lingering waves of anguish that had washed over her, then, and she has to shake herself out of it and remind herself that they’re okay. That they’re safe and alive and she’s not in that forest any longer, that she’s not being plagued by their deaths like she could have been.  
  
  
The car passes by a large sidewalk that’s been refilled in the past few weeks, and all of a sudden the image of Kara lying, limp and bloodied and _dying_ , in the crater she’d formed in the concrete flashes behind her eyes. If she focuses hard enough, she can almost still feel the fabric of Kara’s Supergirl suit grasped in her fist — _Reign’s_ fist — before the Worldkiller had let go and Kara had fallen.  
  
  
“Sam?” Lena says again.

  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I’m just tired,” Sam tells her, tearing her eyes away from the window. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”  
  
  
It’s not a complete lie — she _hadn’t_ gotten much sleep last night, or any day of the week, really. The beds in the DEO medbay were too stiff, too uncomfortable. She’d tossed and turned each night, the pillows more like slabs of concrete under her head.  
  
  
Alex had tried to help some, climbing into the bed despite there being little room and curling up next to her to make it somewhat easier. But on those nights, Sam had still lay wide awake for hours into the night, listening to Alex’s steady breathing as she slept beside her.  
  
  
In the driver's seat, Lena looks back at the road, a dark expression overtaking her features. Sam can’t help but feel guilty for shutting her out, for refusing to talk. She knows that she needs to, knows that the longer she keeps to herself the more damage it will do in the long run. She’s just not… ready yet. To face her feelings. To admit how scared she is that the next time she wakes up, she’ll be back in that dark forest, forever trapped in her own mind while a monster rages on the outside.  
  
  
“Me neither,” Lena finally says, breaking the tense silence that had begun to settle over them. “I suppose insomnia can be a bitch, can’t it?”  
  
  
They pull into the driveway, right up beside Alex’s motorcycle, and Sam makes a note to thank her for not making too big a deal out of it.  
  
  
“Ruby’s excited to have you home,” Lena tells her as she turns the car off. “It’s all she’s been talking about for the past week. She even brought up the idea of throwing you a surprise welcome home party. She told me, and I quote, ‘I’ll invite all the moms from soccer!’”  
  
  
Sam tenses up unintentionally at the idea of having so many people over so soon after her split from Reign, especially a party full of _soccer moms_ , of all things, and Lena shoots her a knowing look as she wrenches open the car door and steps out. “Don’t worry,” she says, a small, understanding smile playing on her lips. “Alex managed to talk her out of it.”  
  
  
“Oh, thank God,” Sam says, following her up the sidewalk to the front porch. “Truthfully, I… don’t think I’m ready for that yet.”  
  
  
“What about a quiet night with movies and wine?” Lena asks, looking over her shoulder at Sam to gauge her reaction. “Though I must warn you, Alex suggested Die Hard again.”  
  
  
Sam nods, offering Lena a smile of her own in return. “That sounds perfect.”  
  
  
Then Lena opens the door.  
  
  
It feels good, walking back into her house after being gone from it for so long, but it doesn’t quite feel like _home_.  
  
  
She doesn’t say this aloud, because she can see the way Ruby’s eyes light up when she walks in, her daughter up and bounding towards her before Sam even has a chance to say anything. But something nags at her, the thought that what was once home for her is no longer that, the images of comfort and normalcy just a cruel wake up call, a reminder that everything now has changed.  
  
  
Sam stares for a long time at the picture frames hung on the wall along the staircase, and it almost doesn’t feel _real_. It’s like she’s not even really here, like the house is a figment of her imagination.  
  
  
“Can you tell that we cleaned?” Ruby asks her, startling Sam out of her head. Her voice is tinged with barely concealed glee as she follows Sam through the house, her whole body practically vibrating with excitement. “Alex and Lena helped a lot. I even cleaned my room! We wanted it to be a surprise.”  
  
  
Sam can’t help but smile at that, a fuzzy warmth blooming in her chest and spreading outwards as she gazes down at her daughter. Then her eyes linger slightly on the blue dye at the tips of her hair, courtesy of Alex while Sam was still with Lena in her secret lab at L-Corp. She’s still getting used to that particular change in detail.  
  
  
“The house looks amazing, Rubes,” she says, and genuinely means it. Ruby beams, and Sam’s smile widens just a little bit as she leans over to hug her tightly. “You did a great job. Thank you, baby.”  
  
  
“Uh— I specifically recall her saying _Alex_ and _Lena_ also helped,” Alex calls out from the kitchen, and even though Sam can’t see her, she can hear the smile in her voice.  
  
  
“Thank you,” Sam says as she walks into the kitchen, putting enough emphasis on it to make Alex roll her eyes. Sam nudges her hip, leaning down to press a gentle, brief kiss against her lips. When she pulls away, Alex is smiling softly. “Really. Thank you.”  
  
  
“Where’s my thank you kiss?” she hears Lena ask from behind her.  
  
  
“ _Ew_ , guys, stop it!” Ruby yells out from the living room, causing Lena to chuckle as she pours them each a glass of wine. Alex’s breath is warm against Sam’s lips as she joins in with Lena’s soft laughter, and for the first time since Reign, just for a moment, Sam thinks that _maybe_ everything will be okay.  
  
  
She wishes she could have known how wrong she’d been.

  
  


* * *

 

  
She only starts to really sleep again a couple weeks after returning home, but that’s when the nightmares begin.

  
Most nights she dreams of buildings crumbling to the ground, of bodies lying mangled and eerily still in the streets. She sees Alex in some dreams and sees Lena in others, but the worst dreams of all are when she sees Ruby. Always bloodied and bruised, always lying motionless among the rest of the civilians of National City. And in every dream, Sam’s aching body stumbles towards them, throat hoarse as she screams their names, begging them not to be dead, not because of her, _God, please not because of her—_ _  
_  
  
She always manages to wake up before the dream can play out in its entirety, always just before she reaches them. She’ll jerk up in bed, her body drenched in a cold sweat and tangled up in sheets that cling to her wet skin, trying hard to catch her breath and remind herself that they’re okay, that it wasn’t real.  
  
  
But tonight—  
  
  
Tonight her dream is different. Tonight, she is standing high above the city she’s brought to ruins, and there’s blood raining from the sky. It comes down in fast, thick drops, painting National City crimson, and soon it becomes like a hurricane. Sam brings her slick, red hands up to her ears, as if doing so will block out the sound of Reign’s voice — a warped, menacing version of her own — shouting at her from inside her own head.  
  
  
The sound itself sends a chill down her spine, but it’s Reign’s words that will tear her apart. _"This world of sinners will end drowning in it’s own blood!”_ _  
_  
  
Up ahead, two red eyes stare at her through the darkness.  
  
  
Then, there’s another voice. It comes from a place outside her own head, fighting to be heard, desperately crawling to the forefront. It’s loud, somehow even louder than Reign’s, and Sam struggles to figure out who it belongs to. _  
_ _  
  
_ _Sam?_ _  
_ _  
  
_ _Sam, baby, you need to wake up._ _  
_ _  
  
_ _You need to—_ _  
_ _  
  
_ Her eyes shoot open and she wakes with a sharp gasp, lungs screaming for air that feels too thick to inhale. There are two hands pressing down on her shoulders, and it takes her a few seconds to realize that she’s not standing above National City anymore. Instead, Alex’s face appears above her, brown eyes locked on hers, full of concern.  
  
  
“Hey, hey, look at me.” The hands slide from her shoulders to cup her cheeks, slightly calloused fingers brushing lightly against her flushed skin. “It’s okay. You’re safe. You were dreaming,” Alex assures her, so softly that Sam almost doesn’t hear it. It’s a whisper in the dark, quiet and cautious.  
  
  
She sits up, and Alex leans over and switches the on lamp sitting on the end table. Instantly, the room is engulfed in a bright golden light, and it’s only then that Sam remembers she’s in Alex’s apartment. They had drinks and watched movies while Ruby had stayed with Lena for the night.  
  
  
She must’ve fallen asleep on the couch halfway through one of the movies.  
  
  
“I, uh—” She tries to speak, but her throat is too dry, too hoarse. She wonders if she’d been screaming in her sleep and realizes that she must have, in order for it to alert Alex.  
  
  
“Hold on.” Alex is up and padding towards the kitchen immediately. Sam can hear her filling a glass with water from the sink, but everything sounds muffled, like her ears are stuffed with cotton. She nods in thanks when Alex hands her the glass, taking greedy gulps and relishing the feeling of the cold drink sliding down her dry throat until it’s drained completely.  
  
  
“I’m sorry,” is the first thing out of her mouth once she feels like she can speak again.  
  
  
Alex’s eyebrows pull together. “Don’t you dare apologize,” she says, her tone leaving no room for argument. Sam doesn’t think she’d have the energy to argue, anyways. “Not for this.”  
  
  
Sam doesn’t say anything. Her eyes are burning with the need to sleep, her eyelids heavy, but she’s afraid of closing them again. She’s afraid that if she closes them, they’ll never open again.

  
“I heard her voice again,” she admits after a while. “Reign, I mean. In my head. And I know, I _know_ she’s gone, but— it’s like she’s still watching me, Alex, and I couldn’t—” She cuts off, inhaling shakily.  
  
  
“Oh, Sam.” Alex pulls her close, and Sam lets her body mold into her side. She rests her head in the crook of Alex’s neck, inhaling deeply and reminding herself that Alex is _good_. Alex is _safe_. She’s safe here, in Alex’s apartment. Away from Reign, who is no longer in her head. Lena had fixed that, they’d made sure of it.  
  
  
So why doesn’t it feel like she’s free? There are still chains around her wrists and ankles, tethering her to a reality that is no more, and it seems that no amount of super-strength is enough for Sam to break herself out of them.  
  
  
“When will it end?” she finds herself asking aloud, without really meaning to.  
  
  
The question sounds weak to her own ears, and Sam hates it. She hates how vulnerable it makes her sound. She’s always had to be the strong one, since having Ruby. As a single, teenage mother, she couldn’t let herself be anything _other_ than strong, not while she had to raise a newborn daughter all on her own.  
  
  
But now she feels that she’s just made herself into a burden, and no matter how many times everyone insists that she’s not one, Sam doesn’t think that feeling will ever go away.  
  
  
“I don’t know,” Alex answers her honestly, fingers treading through her hair. Sam is slightly sweaty from her nightmare, but Alex combs through the knots carefully, not caring. “These things… They take time to heal. But you _will_ heal, Sam, I promise.”  
  
  
It’s only an hour and two cups of hot tea later that Sam feels calm enough to try and go back to sleep.  
  
  
This time, Alex leaves the light on.  
  
  
Sam doesn’t protest.  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
A few hours later, she wakes up before Alex, slipping quietly out from under the blanket her girlfriend must’ve draped over her and into the bathroom. The woman that stares back at her in the mirror is tired, eyes bloodshot and cheeks pale, looking almost hollowed out; Sam splashes cold water on her face and tries not to envision her brown eyes glowing red instead.  
  
  
“My name is Samantha Arias,” she says. Reminds herself, more like. She repeats it again slowly, under her breath, so Alex won’t hear her from the other room. “My name is Samantha Arias, and I am not a Worldkiller.”  
_  
  
_ She repeats the words seven more times with a trembling voice and walks out of the bathroom just as Alex enters the kitchen to make them coffee. _  
_  
  


* * *

  
  
  
The _feeling_ starts early on.  
  
  
Once she presses her skull to the large window that looks out at the loud, bright city stretched below, watching the raindrops race each other and leave blurry streaks down the glass — it starts there.  
  
  
It’s small at first, just a vague warning of what's to come, but it’s _there_.  
  
  
She’s in Lena’s penthouse late one Friday night, and the TV is too bright for her eyes while the rest of the room is blanketed in darkness. They just finished eating dinner, and Lena and Ruby are already fast asleep on the couch, reruns of some cheesy sitcom from the 50’s that Lena pretends not to watch but secretly enjoys is airing, and that’s the first time it happens.  
  
  
_It_ being the feeling Sam gets when reality seems to melt around her, like candle wax dripping down the length of itself once the wick has been lit. Except she doesn’t exactly know what _it_ is, or even what it could be, because she's never felt like this before. She just feels… _different,_ eerily detached from herself, as if all the strings that hold her together had been snipped at the same time.  
  
  
But then the feeling passes, just like that.  
  
  
Sam can’t tell whether it’s been longer than a second or a minute or even an hour when she comes back to herself. All of a sudden, the candle is blown out and the vestiges of emptiness that she felt drift away like smoke.  
  
  
She’s back in Lena’s living room, standing in front of the TV, just in time to hear the live audience’s laughter burst from the speakers as the husband makes one of his typical sarcastic comments to his zany wife. She glances back out the window; National City still sits below her, like a constant, cruel reminder of every horrible sin Reign had committed with her body.  
  
  
That’s the first time it happens, but it’s far from the last.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Two weeks pass. The strange sense of detachment comes and goes in fits and starts, and the mantra in her head becomes louder, the mirror in her bathroom almost ready to crack with the amount of times she repeats it to her reflection.  
  
  
_“My name is Samantha Arias and I am not a Worldkiller.”_ _  
_ _  
  
_ [She tries not to dwell too much on the fact that sometimes, it just feels like she’s lying to herself.]  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Over time, she comes to realize that the nights are the worst.  
  
  
The mornings lure her into a false sense of security, because on days that don’t begin with a nightmare, she wakes up fine, ready to start the day like usual. She wakes up and she’s herself, her skin is her own, and her body belongs to her. She wakes up next to Alex, their naked bodies pressed close together, or she wakes up next to Ruby, sharing her daughter’s warmth inside a cocoon of blankets.  
  
  
She wakes up _fine_.  
  
  
But then the night comes.  
  
  
Night comes, and Sam still doesn’t know what causes it, but she knows whenever it starts to happen. It’s a subtle shift, just barely noticeable at first, but then suddenly Sam’s world is being pulled apart, like a sweater that’s been completely unraveled by the simple, unknowing pull of one loose thread. Usually it only lasts a few minutes, or even mere seconds, but to Sam it always feels like an eternity before she’s back to being herself again.  
  
  
And she deals with it for a while, hoping that it will pass altogether the longer she’s exposed to it. Hoping that she’ll get used to it, that she’ll learn to control it, even, and then learn to stop it completely. Hoping that she can handle this situation herself without dragging anyone else into it, without making it into a _thing_.  
  
  
She can deal with this, she tells herself. She’s a grown woman, a _mother,_  even, and she can deal with this. The feeling of herself fading in and out, she can deal with. The paralyzing fear that accompanies it, she can also deal with.  
  
  
She doesn’t need to be a burden to everyone else, _again.  
_

But _then—_ then the worst of it comes, just months after the very first incident.  
  
  
She’s just getting off work one night, a little later than usual since Alex had promised to cook dinner for Ruby, when it happens again. One minute she’s walking to her car, struggling to find her keys in the mess of a bag slung over her shoulder and hoping that her house isn’t burned down by the time she gets home, and the next minute—  
  
  
The next minute she blinks, and she’s standing in a bar.  
  
  
She’s standing in a bar and she doesn’t know how she got here. She doesn’t remember even passing a bar, and she doesn’t remember entering it. Her car keys are in her hand, but she doesn’t remember ever finding them, either. She doesn’t remember driving. How did she get here? How long has she been here?  
  
  
That particular thought makes her blood freeze. Vague memories of death and gore flash behind her eyelids, reminiscent of all _other_ times she didn’t remember anything. Times when Reign took control, leaving her to fend for herself in the dark, lonely depths of her mind.  
  
  
_[—she’s losing time again and she doesn’t know where she’s been. where has she been? has she been here at the bar the whole time? did she kill anyone? oh, god, did she kill anyone? did she—]_ _  
_  
  
A shot glass crashes to the floor a few feet away, and it startles her enough that the world around her almost seems to come back into focus, if only for a brief moment before it’s harshly ripped away from her once again. In her mind, Sam sees glass breaking as Reign violently smashes her way inside a building, sees windows shattering as she throws a body through them.  
  
  
Oh _God,_ Sam can’t fucking _breathe_.  
  
  
She fumbles with her phone — only briefly acknowledging, with a strong sense of dread, the three missed calls from Alex — before looking for Lena’s contact. The CEO picks up the phone on the third ring, but even though Sam can hear her voice in her ear, she can’t fully understand what Lena is saying to her, her thoughts too jumbled to make anything coherent out.  
  
  
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles into the phone. The chaotic, bustling noise of the busy bar quickly becomes too much for her, and she finds her free hand reaching up to cover the ear that isn’t pressed up against her phone. She shakes her head, tears blurring her vision. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”  
  
  
Somehow, her wobbly legs carry her to the curb outside the bar, and she drops down onto the concrete. She can’t feel a thing, cold and numb, and she’s still holding the phone in her hand but it doesn’t feel _real,_  and Lena’s voice over the line has long since faded away to nothing.  
  
  
It’s like she’s a shell of herself, like a shadow suspended on dust, and she’s colder than she's ever been. There’s a chill seeping into her body, permeating her bones until she’s hollowed out completely, and every part of her is almost weightless. She’s floating aimlessly outside of her own body, unable to grasp onto anything to pull her back to herself.  
  
  
_[_ — _she’s not real. this isn’t her body, these aren’t her hands. she’s not real she’s not real she’s not real—]  
  
  
_“Sam, honey? Can you look at me?”  
  
  
Lena’s voice, this time outside of the phone, pierces through her panic. She’s standing over Sam, still dressed in a tight black dress and five inch heels like she’d come straight from work. And Sam can’t remember telling her where she was, but she must have, and even though it’s only felt like a few seconds have passed since she first called, she realizes with a jolt that she’s been here long enough for Lena to leave the office and drive over to pick her up.  
  
  
She shudders, wraps her arms tighter around herself. It’s like there’s something terribly _wrong_ that’s crawling under her skin, scrabbling up the vertebrae of her spine and burying itself deep in her bones, that’s making her feel so strange.  
  
  
She doesn’t know what it is, but she knows she wants it to stop. She tells Lena just as much, the words just a mumble falling from her lips.  
  
  
“You want what to stop, darling?” Lena asks her softly, crouching down in order to be face-to-face with Sam despite her dress.

  
Sam shakes her head. “I don’t— _“_

  
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what’s _wrong_ with her, and she can barely breathe and her chest feels like it’s being ripped apart, her head pounding between her eyes as she tries to calm down.

  
Her brain barely processes Lena’s hand coming down on her shoulder, and— _no, not hers, this isn’t her body—  
  
_ _  
_ “Sam,” Lena says, loud and firm. Trying to break through her rattled thoughts. “We need to go. Can you stand?”  
  
  
Sam stands on legs that don’t quite feel like hers, leaning heavily against Lena on the way to the car waiting for them. Vertigo clings to her and she sways on her feet, the ground seeming to tilt and rock beneath her.

  
And, God, she’s so _tired_.

  
“Okay, here we go,” Lena says as they duck into the car. Sam has half a mind to be slightly embarrassed about what this must look like as they climb into the backseat and she sees the driver watching them carefully. Her face burns with humiliation, shoulders hunched forward; she wonders what he thinks of her, curled in on herself on the curb outside of a dingy bar, but the other part of her can’t focus on anything but the fact that everything around her is _wrong, wrong, wrong.  
  
_  
Vague is the feeling of Lena’s hand between her shoulder blades, rubbing there soothingly. “You’re okay, sweetie,” she’s saying, in between giving the driver directions back to the house. Sam just shuts her eyes and rests her head against the cold glass of the car window, suddenly exhausted.  
  
  
Her thoughts, inevitably, wander back to how long she’s been gone. She remembers seeing the three missed calls from Alex before she dialed Lena’s number, and wonders about her and Ruby. Are they worried sick about her? Do they think she disappeared again, like she would as Reign? Are they disappointed in her for vanishing like she did?  
  
  
She feels the car pull to a stop, and then Lena is saying, “Sam, we’re home,” in her ear, voice low.  
  
  
Sam looks up. Lena is watching her, hands hovering over her body as though she’s a wild animal that could be easily startled. “I’m sorry,” she says on impulse, without really thinking about it.

  
“Don’t worry about it, honey,” Lena assures her, even though Sam is sure she has no idea what she’s apologizing for. _Sam_ doesn’t even know what she’s apologizing for, but she knows she feels like she has to. Her hands finally come down, grabbing at Sam’s forearms to help her out of the car. “Let’s just get you inside, okay?”

  
Just like the first time, reality melts around her as they walk up to the house together, and every step she takes seems to carry her farther from herself. She’s on autopilot, her actions not her own. In her mind, Sam is no different from a marionette, a puppet with limbs that are only moving before her because they’re attached to strings, her body being controlled by someone else.

  
Somehow, it’s as though she’s still being controlled by Reign, even after all this time. 

  
“Lena, wait,” she chokes out. A few steps ahead of her, Lena stops walking, turning her head to look at her. Sam stands frozen in the middle of her driveway, staring up at the house with wide eyes.  
  
  
_Everything comes with a price,_ Reign’s voice echoes deep within her mind, and Sam thinks this is the price she has to pay. While the Worldkiller has been defeated for months, Samantha Arias has not yet made a full return, no matter how long it’s been. She’s coming back in pieces, much too slowly.  
  
  
[Except sometimes Sam can’t help but wonder if the _opposite_ is happening — if the pieces of her are not coming back, but leaving instead; and that thought is more terrifying than anything else she could imagine, chilling her to the bone.]  
  
  
Suddenly, she feels waves upon waves of shame roll over her, because she’s supposed to be past this. She’s supposed to be okay. She doesn’t want to know what Alex might think, what _Ruby_ might think, when she walks inside like this.  
  
  
Then she suddenly wonders, with a sharp pang of fear in her chest, if Lena has already debriefed them on her current state.  
  
  
But Lena seems to understand her worries. “Ruby is asleep. She thinks you lost track of time at the office.”  
  
  
The knowledge that Ruby hasn’t spent the night worrying seems to lift some of the heavy, burdening weight from Sam’s shoulders. She lets out a harsh breath and nods, a quick and jerky movement that almost hurts her neck.  
  
  
It’s not that she wants to keep secrets from her daughter, or lie and pretend that everything is fine when it’s so clearly not. It’s just that the thought of Ruby seeing her like this fills Sam with the kind of dread that will stick to her like a leech the longer these… _incidents_ persist, sucking the life out of her with each day that passes.  
  
  
And yet—  
  
  
Although Ruby might not know, _Alex_ surely does, and Sam’s chest aches at the thought.  
  
  
What will she think about the fact that Sam can’t even get herself home? What will she think about the fact that Sam feels like a stranger in her own body, staring at her hands because they _don’t feel like_ _hers?_ What will Alex think about her disappearing again, about her barely being able to remember how long it’s been since she left work?  
  
  
“Sam?”  
  
  
She blinks. Lena is staring at her, green eyes filled with too much worry. Sam shakes her head, once, and takes a step back. She can see Alex in the house, turning on the lights, and then the front door is opening and she’s walking down the driveway in a pair of cotton pajama pants and a slightly over-sized grey shirt that Sam is pretty sure is hers.  
  
  
“Hey,” Alex greets warmly, once she’s in arms reach. Her hand comes up, cautiously, to cup Sam’s cheek. Sam automatically leans into her lover’s touch, eyes threatening to slip shut as Alex’s thumb brushes softly against her cheekbone. “ _Hey,”_ Alex says again, more insistent this time, trying to get her attention.  
  
  
Sam swallows hard. Her throat feels too small all of a sudden, constricting. “I’m sorry,” she says, the words slipping out of her mouth again of their own accord.  
  
  
But Alex shakes her head, and she’s got that expression on her face that she usually has when she’s trying to understand something even without being given an explanation. “It’s pretty cold out here,” she points out. She’s looking at the way Sam is shivering, and Sam wants to tell her that she’s cold not on the outside but on the _inside_ , but she doesn’t. “What do you say to a hot bath?” Alex suggests.  
  
  
Despite herself, Sam hesitates. Her eyes drift slowly from Alex to Lena, unsure, and Lena nods softly in encouragement. Alex’s thumb keeps rubbing her cheek, and even feather-light, the touch serves to ground her, if only a little bit. It brings a small piece of her back, and she finds herself nodding in agreement. A bath sounds good — she can do a bath.  
  
  
“Okay,” she manages to say, and notes the subtle sigh of relief Alex lets out at the response.  
  
  
“Come on,” Alex prompts, and then there’s a warm hand on her lower back, leading her inside. She faintly registers Alex whispering something to Lena on their way in before she hands her Sam’s car keys, and then Lena is pressing a feather-light kiss to Sam’s temple before climbing back into the car they rode back home in. Sam turns her head and watches it pull away from the curb just as Alex shuts the front door behind them.

  
 

* * *

  
  
  
She sits on the toilet seat lid as Alex runs her bath, crouched by the tub with one hand dipped into the water. Her other hand rests comfortingly on Sam’s knee, squeezing it every so often as if to remind her she’s still there.  
  
  
Her touch, like the hand on her cheek earlier, helps Sam feel a little more grounded. She can almost feel her body becoming more familiar to herself, her mind beginning to emerge from the thick fog that it’s been engulfed in for what seems like hours. The feeling that had buried itself so deep in her bones earlier in the night starts to reside, making way for a sense of calmness.  
  
  
“It’s ready,” Alex says, once the tub has filled up. “Do you want me in there with you?”  
  
  
It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve bathed together. Sam’s bathtub has more than enough room for two people to fit inside it, and on days when Alex comes home sore from a rough DEO mission, she often wants nothing more than to relax in the tub with Sam, surrounded by scented candles and soft music.  
  
  
Those nights are usually the ones that Sam looks forward to the most.  
  
  
“Yes,” she answers, almost instantly. “I need… I just need to feel you against me.”  
  
  
It isn’t sexual, the way she says it, even though words like those usually are on any other given day. While Alex’s hand on her knee is helpful some in tethering her to reality, to herself, Sam knows that feeling Alex’s body against hers, arms wrapped around her, will probably do even more.  
  
  
Which is why as soon as Alex is stripped of her own clothes and settled against the back of the tub, Sam is immediately pressing up against her body, resting her head on her shoulder. Alex wraps one arm around Sam’s own shoulders and the other skims her sides, fingertips brushing against her ribs. Sam curls up into her until she’s practically sitting in her lap, knees pulled up to her chest, and she buries her face in the crook of Alex’s neck.  
  
  
For a few minutes, neither of them say anything. Eyes closed, Sam relishes in the feel of Alex holding her, the bath water sloshing around their bodies as one of them shifts every so often. She still doesn’t know what’s making her feel this way, like the whole world has tilted on its axis, and it still nags at her — but this helps some, and for the moment, that is enough.  
  
  
“Do you want to talk about what happened tonight?” Alex asks her after a while. Her hand reaches up and strokes Sam’s hair, combing it back behind her ears.  
  
  
Sam hesitates for a moment before answering, not quite sure what to say.  
  
  
“I just— I don’t know what’s _wrong_ with me, Alex,” she admits, voice breaking slightly. She suddenly feels a strong sense of déjà vu, sent back in time to when she first realized she was experiencing blackouts from Reign, confused and terrified in Alex’s apartment while Ruby waited by the elevators. “I don’t know what happened to me tonight. It feels like Reign all over again, but this time—”  
  
  
This time, it is not Reign invading a body that is not her own.  
  
  
This time, it is Sam.  
  
  
“I know,” Alex whispers against her hair. Her arms tighten around Sam’s body. “We’ll figure this out. I promise.”  
  
  
Then, the dam breaks. Hot tears track down her cheeks as she chokes back a sob, one hand reaching up to press against her mouth to muffle the sound. The worst thing she could do right now is alert Ruby from across the hall with her cries, to have her see Sam like this, a naked, sobbing mess in Alex’s arms. To start wondering what got Sam to this point in the first place.  
  
  
She doesn’t know how long she cries for, but by the time she stops, her eyes ache with the strain, and she feels more exhausted than she did when she was first leaving work after an almost fourteen hour work day.  
  
  
She barely registers Alex helping her out of the tub, but she does register the weight and the warmth of a fuzzy towel wrapping around her body, and she has just enough energy to dry herself off without Alex’s help, clutching the edges of the towel so hard her knuckles turn white.    
  
  
Alex has already laid out pajamas for both of them when she steps into the bedroom, and Sam closes her eyes as she pulls the flannel pants up, focusing on the feeling of the soft fabric against her legs.  
  
  
“Thank you,” she says, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. Alex curls up against the pillows, knees up to her chest, watching her carefully. She’s still got that expression on her face from earlier, and Sam wonders again what she must think of her disappearing.  
  
  
Then Alex pats the spot next to her. Sam crawls over the bedspread and plops down against the pillows, feeling Alex’s hand come up to rub at her arm. Her palm is warm, fingertips gliding softly against her skin, and Sam reaches up to grab her hand, interlacing their fingers together.  
  
  
Something inside her seems to shift back from where it had gotten knocked out of place before, and while it should make her feel nothing but relief, Sam can’t help but wonder how long this returned sense of normalcy will last before reality once again starts to blur around the edges.  
  
  
“Alex, what if something is really wrong with me?” she asks, and then she questions if the universe would really be that cruel, to throw something else at her just a few months after cursing her with Reign. “What if I’m—”  
  
  
“Hey, no. Don’t start thinking like that. We’ll figure this out, okay?” Alex echoes her words from earlier. “You’re not alone in this, Sam. You have me, Lena… We won’t let what happened to you before happen to you again.”  
  
  
Sam nods. She can only hope that Alex is right.  
  
  
  


* * *

  _  
  
  
“My name is Samantha Arias and I am not a Worldkiller.” _

  
  


* * *

 

  
The next few days manage to pass by without much incident, but there’s still an overall sense of numbness that clings to Sam since the night at the bar. Nevertheless, she throws herself into her work and Ruby, and even goes on a few dates with Alex to the new Italian restaurant that had opened up across the street from L-Corp, and it’s… fine.  
  
  
She feels fine, mostly, but there are pieces of her that are still missing. Parts of her that are still not completely _here,_ in the moment, and she doesn’t know how to fix that particular problem yet. She tries to fall back into her normal routine, the kind of routine she had before Reign, but it comes not without difficulty.  
  
  
Which is why she had been relieved when Alex texted her about meeting during their lunch break on one particularly slow afternoon, fortunately saving Sam from having anymore free time to start overthinking things.  
  
  
When she gets to the DEO with a steaming takeout bag from Alex’s favorite Chinese restaurant, however, Alex is nowhere to be found.  
  
  
Sam’s eyes burn through the DEO’s walls as she wanders through the building’s long corridors, tuned into Alex’s heartbeat. She hadn’t been in any of the training rooms where Sam had expected she’d be, nor was she in the command center or on the balcony. Glancing at her phone, she sees her last texts have all gone unseen, and she purses her lips.  
  
  
“Miss Arias!” It’s Brainy, suddenly standing right next to her in the hallway, having popped up out of nowhere. She’d been so focused on Alex’s heartbeat that she hadn’t heard him practically materialize beside her, and she startles at his voice, involuntarily taking a step back and almost dropping the bag of food onto the floor.  
  
  
Brainy doesn’t seem to notice. “What a surprise to see you here! Well, not to me, at least. I, for one, already knew you were coming. In fact, Director Danvers has provided me with strict orders on what to do once you arrived.”  
  
  
“What do you mean strict—” She cuts herself off and shakes her head, frowning. “Where _is_ Alex? We were supposed to meet for lunch.”  
  
  
“She’s in a meeting with the president and Colonel Haley right now in regards to Agent Liberty,” Brainy answers, grimacing slightly. Sam vaguely remembers Alex ranting about both Colonel Haley _and_ Agent Liberty one night after coming home from work in a bad mood, and she can’t help but feel a pang of sympathy in her chest for her girlfriend.  
  
  
“I’ve been instructed to direct you to her office to wait for her,” Brainy goes on, already walking quickly through the halls before she can even process the fact that he’s on the move. Sam quickly strides forward to catch up with him.  
  
  
In the entirety of their relationship, Sam has only been in Alex’s office a whopping total of one time, on the day after Alex was promoted in order to bring her a framed photo of herself, Sam, and Ruby to put on her desk as a gift. Since then, Sam’s visits to the DEO in general have been scarce, being that most of the memories she has of the building are less than pleasant.  
  
  
“May I ask how you’re feeling?” Brainy asks her. When Sam looks at him in question, he quickly adds, “Since the, you know…”    
  
  
Making a wild gesture that Sam doesn’t quite understand, he finally purses his lips and bluntly says, “Since your split from the Kryptonian Worldkiller, Reign.”  
  
  
Sam blinks in surprise at his question as they finally come to a stop in front of Alex’s office. She makes a mental note to talk to Alex about teaching the alien some tact, but clears her throat and answers him anyways. “I’m alright.”  
  
  
The lie slips through her teeth easily, and Brainy doesn’t seem to question it as they walk into Alex's office. She hasn’t talked to Brainy too much, and she knows he gets on Alex’s nerves sometimes; the thought of admitting to him that she’s actually not alright, that part of her still feels like her evil Worldkiller counterpart is holding the reins, is almost unthinkable enough to be laughable.  
  
  
But then a realization hits her, a jolt shooting down her spine.  
  
  
“Brainy, you’re… You’re from the future, right?” she asks suddenly, hoping it’s not too weird of a question.  
  
  
Brainy looks at her curiously, an eyebrow raised. “I am,” he answers slowly, two fingers immediately going up to twirl the golden ring on his right hand almost unconsciously. “Why do you ask?”  
  
  
Sam hesitates. Suddenly there’s a question burning on her tongue, one that makes her heart beat faster in her chest at the thought of getting an answer. There's a small part of her that almost _doesn't_ want to know, doesn't want to hear something she won't like, something that’ll surely tear her apart; but the prospect of receiving an answer that’ll put her mind at ease overrides all her doubts.  
  
  
_Do I ever become the villain myself?_ she wants to say.  
  
  
But for some reason, the only words that come out of her mouth are, “I was just curious,” and she bites back a heavy sigh at herself as he nods in acknowledgement.  
  
  
"Right,” he says, turning back towards the door and reaching for the doorknob. Then, after a beat of silence, almost as an afterthought, “Oh, and I will let Director Danvers know that you have arrived in her office safely.”  
  
  
And Sam yearns to try and ask him the question again before he leaves, to ask if he knows what happens to her in the future, if he knows whether or not everything turns out alright in the end — her chest aches at the thought that maybe, just maybe, he does — but before she can even muster up the courage to do so, Brainy is already stepping out of the office and closing the door behind him, and Sam has missed her chance.  
  
  
When Alex walks in a few minutes later, apologizing for taking so long in the meeting, Sam swallows the sudden, sour feeling of regret and plasters on what she hopes looks less like a grimace and more like an easy-going smile instead.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
_“My name is Samantha Arias and I am not a Worldkiller. My name is Samantha Arias and I am not a—”_  
  
  
There’s a knock at the bathroom door that startles Sam enough to tear her eyes away from the mirror above the sink. Then another. Then, “Mom? Tess’s mom is almost here to pick me up.”  
  
  
And— right. Sam vaguely remembers talking to Tess’s mom a week ago about picking Ruby up for school today, because she has an important conference at eight and it takes twenty extra minutes to drive from Ruby’s school to L-Corp on a good day.  
  
  
“Okay, baby,” she says distractedly, before looking back into the mirror.  
  
  
Despite the ongoing mantra in her head, she doesn’t quite recognize the person staring back at her through the glass as herself, as _Samantha Arias._ She knows it must be her, though, because the reflection has her eyes and it has her nose, too. That’s her hair, long and brown, frizzy and curling at the ends because she hasn’t yet dried it after stepping out of the shower.  
  
  
“Mom!” Ruby’s voice through the door is insistent, the knocking on the wood becoming quicker and harsher as her daughter quickly grows impatient with her.  
  
  
She blinks hard once, then twice, and the red she thought she saw in her reflection’s eyes for a brief, terrifying minute disappears when she opens them again. They’re back to being a normal, warm hazel color, and she breathes out a sigh of relief, releasing the harsh grip she had on the edge of the sink. There are cracks in the porcelain now, and Sam makes a mental note to ask Alex to fix it later, her mind already running through all the plausible excuses she can use for how they got there.  
  
  
She opens the bathroom door. Ruby is standing there patiently, book-bag draped across one shoulder, munching on a piece of toast. Downstairs, the doorbell rings, and Sam leans over to hug her daughter.  
  
  
It’s only supposed to be a second-long embrace, but for some reason she can’t help herself, and Sam pulls her daughter tighter against her. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply, thankful to Lena for not telling Ruby anything that had happened that night with the incident at the bar, thankful that Ruby hasn’t noticed anything going on, thankful that she still believes her mom is finally okay again.  
  
  
After a long moment, Sam hears the doorbell ring again, and Ruby groans. With her daughter pressed against her, Sam feels the rumble of it in her chest. _“Mom_ ,” she whines, pushing against Sam’s shoulders to get away. “Come on, I gotta go _._ ”  
  
  
Sam forces herself to let go, plastering on a warm smile and ignoring the slightly exasperated look Ruby has on her face. “Sorry, sorry! I love you, Rubes. Have a good day at school, and do _not_ use the tips Alex gave you to punch Rachel Matthews in the face.”  
  
  
Ruby rolls her eyes, but reluctantly shrugs a shoulder when Sam shoots her a pointed look. “Fine,” she relents with a small smile, before spinning on her heel and rushing down the stairs. “Love you too!”  
  
  
Sam waits until she hears the door swing shut with a careless bang before turning back, just for a second, to look in the mirror one last time. When she sees that the eyes that look back at her are still brown, she nods reassuringly to herself and closes the bathroom door behind her on the way out.

   
  


* * *

  
  
  
_“My name is Samantha Arias and I am not a Worldkiller.”_

_  
  
_

* * *

  
  
  
On a rare night, Sam dreams of her adoptive mother.  
  
  
It’s fairly unusual — she hasn’t dreamt of Patricia since she was 16, newly homeless and only a couple months pregnant, tossing and turning in her cot at the shelter. Her dreams would replay on a loop each night back then, Sam being forced to relive the moment Patricia kicked her out over and over again.  
  
  
That was almost thirteen years ago.  
  
  
Nevertheless, she wakes up with a scream stuck in her throat in the middle of the night, heart thumping unevenly against her ribs. The image of her mother’s eyes staring into her own is sharp and painful in her mind, and Sam swears she can still see the way the life drains from them, blood trickling out of the corners of Patricia’s mouth as Reign digs her claws in deeper, twisting and curling and squeezing.  
  
  
_I love you, Sam,_ she hears Patricia say, choking. _I forgive you._

  
For some reason, Sam runs those three words through her mind the most. _I forgive you.  
  
_  
She squeezes her eyes shut and swallows hard. Something like a memory flashes through her mind, of her hand being coated in her mother’s warm, wet blood, and with a strong, cold feeling of horror that nearly paralyzes her, Sam knows it is not just the dream she is remembering. It is real, and it happened, and suddenly Sam feels sick to her stomach.  
  
  
She lurches out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom, just barely making it to the toilet in time. She can hear Patricia’s voice in her head, calling her _good,_ calling her _kind,_ and it only makes her stomach turn more, leaving her gasping desperately for air between violent, painful heaves.  
  
  
Her hand shakes as she reaches up to flush the toilet; her whole body wracked with tremors, unable to stop trembling, as she sits on her knees on the hard floor of the bathroom. For a brief moment, Sam debates on whether or not she should get back up and return to her bed.  
  
  
She doesn’t.

  
Instead, she finds herself swinging her fist at the floor. The tiles crack immediately, crumbling into dust in front of her, and Sam punches it again. She feels nothing as she slams her knuckles into the ceramic, creating long cracks that split down the floor like spiderwebs.

  
Her hand does not break. It doesn’t even bruise, and Sam wants nothing more than to scream in frustration at the fact that she is _invincible_ , and she is _bulletproof_ , and yet she does not deserve to be. Her hands don’t deserve to be as unaffected as they are after what they’ve done, after how many people have died because of them, her mother included.

  
There’s a pressure building behind her eyes, pulsing at her temples, and all Sam wants to do is go back to sleep. She slumps over, lungs burning with the strain of trying to take in long, deep breaths to calm down.

  
When her body finally relaxes, she folds her arms across the edge of the bathtub, drops her head down, and cries.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  
The next morning, the dream nags at her. She’s lost in her head as she cooks breakfast, faintly listening to Ruby getting dressed upstairs, rolling the image of Patricia around in her mind.  
  
  
“You okay?” Alex asks. She had stopped by early to have breakfast with them, and although Sam always enjoys her presence, she knows she hasn’t exactly acted like it this morning, too zoned out and distracted. “You’ve been pretty quiet.”  
  
  
The smell of fresh coffee wafts through the air, the grinding of the Keurig being the only sound between them besides the occasional scrape of a chair or the banging of the cabinets as they each move around the kitchen, Alex grabbing plates and mugs while Sam pours banana pancake batter into a pan.

  
“I—” Sam starts to say, then stops, hesitating. Her eyes burn with a lack of sleep, and there’s dull ache that blooms in her chest as she thinks back to last night.  
  
  
Alex glances over at her, curious. “You…?” she prompts, but receives nothing but hesitant silence in response.  
  
  
“Hey, what is it?” she tries to ask again, standing on her tiptoes to reach the cabinet with the alcohol. Sam reaches over to snatch the bottle of liquor back from her hand before she has even closed the cabinet door, shooting her girlfriend a pointed look as she puts it back on the shelf.  
  
  
“It’s nine in the morning,” she scolds, ignoring the way Alex sticks her tongue out as she slides past her to get to the coffee.  
  
  
“Yes, well, as the famous saying goes: it’s five o’clock somewhere,” she retorts with a playful eye roll, before growing serious once more. Sam immediately tenses up, regretting saying anything and feeling anxiety build in the pit of her stomach as she waits for Alex to speak again. “Seriously, though… What were you going to say earlier?”  
  
  
Sam’s chest seems to rattle as she takes a deep breath. Alex is watching her silently, patiently, as she figures out how to force the words out of her mouth. Finally, she ends up blurting them out, voice tense. “I saw my mother.”  
  
  
Alex’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Sam shifts uncomfortably, flipping a pancake over and adding it to the steadily growing stack on the plate beside her. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows that they don’t need this many, but Sam has never quite been able to stop herself from cooking when she’s nervous like this.  
  
  
“Sam, what do you mean you saw your mother?”

  
Sam clenches her jaw. She can still hear Ruby moving upstairs, and she doesn’t want her daughter to come down to find them in the middle of a serious discussion like this. But Alex is staring at her expectantly, waiting for an answer, so Sam repeats herself, her voice trembling. “I saw my mother last night. I dreamt about her. What I did to her.”

  
“What _Reign_ did to her,” Alex corrects her almost immediately, stepping closer. Sam wants to look away, but Alex catches her eye easily. “Sam, you didn’t do anything wrong. You weren’t in control, it wasn’t your fault.”

  
But Sam shakes her head. The guilt and the grief is enough to make her head spin, and she swallows the bile rising in her throat as she stares into loving brown eyes. “No, but it was,” she insists, voice cracking. 

  
There’s no use in denying it; the mantra that runs through her mind day-after-day, the words she speaks into the mirror to her reflection each morning, is nothing but a lie. “It was _my_ body, _my_ hands that killed her, Alex. And you can’t tell me it wasn’t, because it was.”  
  
  
Without her, Reign would not have had a vessel in the first place.  
  
  
Just like last night, Sam can still feel the blood on her hands. She feels sick again, but she forces herself to take deep, slow breaths, pushing the feeling of nausea down.  
  
  
“What can I do?” Alex asks, almost pleadingly. “What can I say?”  
  
  
Sam looks up at her. She feels just like she did sitting on the curb of the bar that awful night, cold and numb. “Nothing.” She shrugs helplessly. “Sometimes there’s nothing to say.”  
  
  
She says this right as Ruby finally comes bounding down the stairs. Alex stares at her, jaw clenching and unclenching, a helpless look in her eyes.  
  
  
“Are those blueberry or banana?” Ruby asks excitedly, oblivious to the sudden, thick cloud of tension that has fallen over the kitchen. Her chair scrapes against the floor as she sits down at the table, and Sam just shrugs again, turning back to the stove and pouring more pancake batter into the pan.  
  
  
“Banana,” she replies, straightening up and flashing a casual smile towards her daughter. “Good morning, baby.”  
  
  
“Morning, Mom,” Ruby says. Then, “Morning, Alex!”

  
Sam feels the moment when Alex finally looks away, focusing back on her coffee. “Morning, kiddo,” she greets back with a tight smile, and whatever else Alex wanted to say to Sam seems to die in her throat.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  
_“My name is Samantha Arias and I am not a Worldkiller. My name is Samantha Arias and I am not a Worldkiller. My name is Samantha Arias and I am not—”_ _  
_ _  
  
_ _“My name is Samantha Arias and I am not_ —”  
  
  
_“I am not—”_  
  
  
She stops, gritting her teeth. Her reflection stares back at her, tired and defeated, and she tears her eyes away from the mirror, unable to even look at herself.  
  
  
She leaves the bathroom without finishing her sentence.  
  
  


* * *

  
  


“I think I’m going to visit her,” Sam says abruptly during dinner a few nights later, and both Alex and Ruby look up at her, surprised. She mindlessly scrapes her fork against her plate, chewing on her bottom lip nervously. “My mother,” she clarifies, even though she doesn’t need to. “I’m going to visit her.”  
  
  
“Sam,” Alex starts to say, probably to talk her out of it, but Sam shakes her head. She has made her decision, and she isn’t going to change her mind. “You know you don’t have to do anything just because—”  
  
  
“I do,” Sam argues. From the corner of her eye she can see Ruby watching them quietly, eyes jumping back and forth between her and Alex.  
  
  
“It’s the least I can do. Because yes, she might have been a horrible mother. She might’ve kicked me out, left me on my own to take care of Ruby. Hell, I hadn’t even spoken to her in thirteen years. But she still raised me until I was sixteen, Alex. She was still my mother, and I’m the reason that she’s dead. So I at least owe her this.” 

  
For a few moments of tense silence, Sam thinks Alex is still going to try and argue with her about it. Remind her again that it wasn’t her fault, that it was Reign who killed Patricia, and that Sam owes her nothing.  
  
  
But to her surprise, Alex just purses her lips and nods solemnly, reaching a hand across the table to take Sam’s. Sam lets her, sighing as Alex rubs her thumb across the back of her hand.  
  
  
“Okay,” she says. An emotion flickers in her eyes that Sam can’t quite place. “Okay, we can go visit her. I’ll drive you. When do you want to—”  
  
  
“Right now,” Sam tells her determinedly, already standing up from her chair. They haven’t even finished dinner yet, their plates still half-full of chicken and potatoes. Sam doesn’t care. The weight sitting on her chest is too heavy to bear, and she needs to get it off as soon as possible. “I want to go right now.”    
  
  
Neither Alex nor Ruby argues with her about it. Sam grabs her coat, hears Alex grab the keys, and Ruby bounds ahead of them through the yard to the car.  
  
  
There is a church a couple miles away from the farm Sam had grown up on. She still remembers Patricia insisting that they attend every Sunday morning, and can vaguely recall the way the church dress made her shoulders itch, and how hard and uncomfortable the pews would become by the end of every long, tedious service.  
  
  
She’s hit with these memories as she climbs the small hill towards the tall white building, Alex and Ruby following quietly behind her. Behind the church, there is a small, lonely cemetery, full of tall marble headstones within a wrought-iron gate.  
  
  
Sam feels her stomach drop a little bit at the thought of her mother’s own headstone sitting among the rest of them.  
  
  
The bouquet of flowers are heavy in her hand as she approaches the spot where Patricia is buried. Rather than being slightly deteriorated and covered in bits of moss, the marble looks newer than the others around it, carved out only a few months ago. Sam swallows thickly at the words engraved in the stone — _Beloved wife and mother,_ it says — and hates the burn of resentment that rises up automatically in her chest after reading the words.  
  
  
It’s the oddest feeling, she notes, as she kneels down before the grave and sets the bouquet of flowers down. The mixture of grief and bitterness, of white-hot anger that courses through the same veins that carry along her crippling guilt.  
  
  
“She said she forgave me,” she says, looking over her shoulder. Alex and Ruby stand there in the frosty grass behind her, both of them watching her in somber silence. She shrugs, letting out a laugh. It’s full of bitterness, of sadness, and she shakes her head at herself. “When Reign killed her, she said she forgave me… And yet, even though she’s dead, I still haven’t forgiven her.”  
  
  
Alex sets a hand on her shoulder, kneeling beside her. Ruby kneels on Sam’s other side, her daughter’s gloved hand finding her own and grasping at it tightly.  
  
  
Sam heaves out a tired sigh, aching with something akin to regret, and lets them both pull her into a hug.  
  
  
  


* * *

 

  
By the time they leave the cemetery, nothing around Sam feels real at all.

  
  


* * *

 

  
She floats through the next few days, and the eerie feeling of detachment is back again with a vengeance. Hour by hour, minute by minute, the world blurs around the edges; more often than not, Sam’s sense of reality is being pulled apart, and she is stuck in limbo, constantly floating back and forth between _being_ here and _not_ being here.   
  
  
“—and potential investors are arriving around two, so we’ll have to be ready and in the conference room by—”  
  
  
Her eyelids droop as she rests her chin in her palm, trying hard to focus on the words Lena is saying to her. Sam can see her mouth moving and can hear her voice, but she can’t quite make out the words coming out, her brain too tired to process it.  
  
  
She hasn’t slept for almost three days, too afraid that when she closes her eyes, she’ll be haunted by more nightmares. The two coffees she’s already had this morning have done nothing to alleviate the exhaustion creeping into her system, and she can feel herself slipping, eyes sliding shut.  
  
  
“Sam, are you even listening to anything I’m saying?” Lena demands.  
  
  
Startled, Sam jerks up at the sound of her name, looking sheepishly at Lena from across the desk. She rubs at her eyes, groaning softly. “Sorry, sorry,” she mutters. She tries to sit up straighter in the office chair, fighting against the fatigue in her bones while simultaneously trying to contain the yawn she can feel climbing up her throat. “Yes, I’m listening.”  
  
  
Lena’s eyebrows pull together, dark red lips pursed. “Look, if you’re not up for this meeting, then I can—”  
  
  
“No,” Sam argues, shaking her head insistently. “I am up for it, really. I’m just a little tired, that’s all. Trust me, by the time the meeting rolls around, the caffeine will have kicked in and I’ll be back to normal.” At Lena’s skeptical look, Sam leans forward, splaying her hands across the desk. “Lena, seriously. I can do it.”  
  
  
Lena still looks unsure, but Sam plasters on what she hopes is a reassuring smile, and the CEO sits back in her chair with a light shrug of her shoulders. “Okay.”  
  
  
An hour later, she’s standing on the balcony after the investor meeting adjourns, looking out over National City, just barely able to feel the biting cold against her skin. She can hear both Ruby and Alex’s heartbeats even from L-Corp, beating in tandem, Alex having offered to look after Ruby on her day off.  
  
  
That’s where Lena finds her again. Sam hears her come in, listens to the _clack clack clack_ of her heels against the floor as she walks across the office to the balcony.

  
“No coat?” is how Lena greets her.

  
Sam shrugs, not turning to look at her. Across the city, Alex’s heartbeat speeds up a little more, just enough to be noticeable, but she tries not to worry about it too much. “Don’t need one.”  
  
  
Lena approaches the edge of the balcony where she stands, leaning against the railing. Sam still doesn’t look at her, afraid of what she’ll see in her best friend’s eyes. Worry, definitely. Sympathy, maybe. She doesn’t want to find out.  
  
  
“You did good in there,” Lena says, setting a hand on her forearm. She sounds almost _surprised_ , as if she thought Sam would zone out again in the middle of the meeting. The worst part is, Sam knows Lena wouldn’t be wrong to think that.

  
Nevertheless, she bristles at the compliment. “I can still do my job, Lena,” she snaps before she can stop herself. She regrets it immediately after she sees Lena wince slightly at her harsh tone, the hand on her arm pulling back. Sam sighs heavily, closing her eyes and rubbing at her temple. “I’m sorry, that was— that was totally uncalled for.”  
  
  
Lena shrugs. “You’re tired and stressed out, Sam. It’s perfectly understandable.”  
  
  
And Sam doesn’t know why this is the comment to make her break, but it is. Suddenly, all of her frustrations rise to the surface, practically overflowing, and she slams her fist into the balcony railing. It cracks immediately under her strength, the wood viciously splitting all the way down the middle.  
  
  
“But I shouldn’t be!” she blurts out. This time, Lena’s expression remains passive, as though she’s been expecting an outburst like this from Sam. Maybe she has. Maybe Lena’s been waiting for her to blow up this whole time, as if she’s a can of soda that’s been shaken up, just waiting to be opened so everything inside it can explode.  
  
  
“I shouldn’t be tired and stressed out! I should be happy. I should be _free_ . I should be able to get home to my girlfriend and my daughter without ending up in some bar with no memory of how I got there. I should be able to sleep a full night without waking up from a horrible, _horrible_ nightmare! And I should be able to live my life without worrying about the next time my mind is just going to _check out_ of my body. I’m supposed to—”  
  
  
She cuts herself off abruptly, mouth snapping shut. Lena frowns, turning her body to face her head-on. “Supposed to what?” she inquires.  
  
  
Sam shakes her head. When she speaks again, her voice shakes slightly. “I’m supposed to be better. Reign is gone, I’m supposed to have my life and my body _back_ . Instead, I just feel like… like it doesn’t even belong to me anymore.”  
  
  
Months ago, she was begging to be able to come back to herself, to escape the dark prison Reign had tried to trap her in. Now she’s a stranger in her own body, begging to be let out. But there is no _out,_ and Sam feels even more trapped than before.  
  
  
If possible, Lena’s frown deepens at her admittance. Sam only feels worse, like the sudden tension in her friend’s shoulders is due to the burdening weight that she’s dropping onto them. “Sam, how long have you been feeling like this?”  
  
  
Sam shrugs, leaning heavily against the railing. She feels exhausted again, suddenly, and all she wants to do is close her eyes and fall asleep.  
  
  
“A few months,” she admits defeatedly, rubbing at her face. She grinds the heel of her hands into her eyes, pressing hard enough into them until bright, colorful dots burst behind her eyelids like fireworks. “Since the split, I guess. It was on and off at first, but now it’s just… _constant_.”  
  
  
Lena moves closer, her hand coming to rest back on Sam’s arm like it was before. She has the same expression she wore when she first realized Sam was Reign, all those months ago in her office after Sam’s disappearance at the ice rink.  
  
  
“Why didn’t you say anything about this before?”

  
It’s not accusatory, the way she says it. It’s gentle, and it doesn’t make Sam feel as though she’s being judged. Despite the voices in her head telling her the opposite sometimes, she knows that Lena would never judge her. Lena is safe; Sam can talk to her, confide in her about what’s been going on. 

  
She thinks about seeing someone unrecognizable in the mirror every morning, swallowing a bitter taste in her mouth. Even now, she doesn’t quite feel like herself, and she’s almost _surprised_ that the limbs attached to her are following the orders her brain is giving them; she almost can’t believe that they are really _hers,_  that they belong to her.

  
“I thought I could handle it on my own. I didn’t want to burden anyone else with this. Not after Reign. Not again.” She sighs heavily, shoulders slumping in defeat. “But it’s just gotten so much worse since…” 

  
She trails off, but Lena seems to know already what she wants to say. She straightens up, lips pursed. “Since the night at the bar?”  
  
  
Sam stays quiet, only shaking her head in response. That would be the easy answer, sure. But the truth is that it’s been bad for a while. For _months_ . She just hadn’t fully acknowledged it until that night, hadn’t wanted to admit that every time one of these “incidents” happened before, it was just as worrying as the incident at the bar. It didn’t matter that they weren’t as intense — the fact that they were happening at all, not to mention they worked side-by-side with the nightmares, was enough to cause concern.  
  
  
Swallowing past the thick lump in her throat, her voice is impossibly small as she admits, “Sometimes it feels like the Harun-El separated me from more than just Reign.”  
  
  
Lena doesn’t answer. Sam can feel the tension in her chest coiling tighter and tighter around her ribs, trying to squeeze the life out of her. It’s the first time she’s admitted this aloud to anyone, the first time she’s realized just how true the words are.  
  
  
Below them, Sam can hear every sound the city makes. Every piercing siren, every voice and crying baby, every impatient car horn. She can see through the restaurant across the busy street from L-Corp, through the walls to the people inside.  
  
  
Overwhelmed, she glances down at the crack in the balcony railing and her hands start to tremble slightly, suddenly hyper-aware of all the unwanted powers she now possesses.  
  
  
Powers that, so far, have caused nothing but death and destruction. Powers that have stripped Sam of her humanity, that remind her every single day that she’s not the same person she used to be. She’s different now, an _alien_ , and even after all this time, part of her still struggles to grasp onto that concept.  
  
  
Nothing is the same.  
  
  
“I’m scared,” she finally says, breaking the silence. She can still feel Lena’s eyes on her. “I’m terrified that things will never go back to how they were.”  
  
  
“And they won’t,” Lena says, and Sam’s eyes shoot up to stare at her. She’s never known Lena to be one to sugarcoat things, not ever, but she hadn’t expected the CEO to agree with her so bluntly. “Your life will never go back to how it was, Sam, and there’s nothing you can do about that.”  
  
  
Sam looks away, eyes burning with hot tears. She blinks them away, shaking her head. Deep down she knows that Lena’s words, painful as they are, are truer than she wants them to be.  
  
  
“And I get it,” Lena continues. “I’ve been there, remember? After I watched my mother die, my life was never the same. After Lex went mad, things spiraled even further out of control. Everything had changed. _I_ had changed. And yes, of course you can hope that things will go back to normal eventually, that they will go back to how they were before, but they won’t. And they never will.”  
  
  
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Sam asks, voice cracking with the strain of not letting herself break down. “What do I do, if I don’t even know who I am anymore?”  
  
  
“You’ll never be the same person you were a year ago, Sam,” Lena tells her. “But that doesn’t mean you’ll never get better.”  
  
  
Sam’s voice is quiet when she asks, “How?”  
  
  
“By rebuilding yourself,” Lena answers without hesitation. Her hand slides from Sam’s forearm down to hold the hand that Sam still has on the railing, interlocking their fingers. “After Lex got arrested, I uprooted my entire life and moved here to National City. I took over LuthorCorp and made it into my own company, and I worked hard to make a name for myself in this city. A name that wasn’t tainted by Lex’s actions.”  
  
  
She pauses, seeming to be choosing her next words carefully. “I didn’t try to fix things. I didn’t try to force everything to go back to normal after what he did. When something is broken beyond repair, you don’t drive yourself mad trying to get it back to how it was before. You rebuild it completely, into something better.”  
  
  
Sam takes a deep, shaky breath and lets her eyes fall shut, taking in Lena’s words. The thought of starting almost from scratch, rebuilding herself after everything with Reign, feels like too daunting of a task. Something that will take her months, maybe even years, to do.  
  
  
And it’s something that she can’t possibly achieve while living here in National City, the very place where every horrible, traumatizing thing had occurred. A city so fraught with chaos, where every construction site is a direct result of the destruction Reign had caused, where every graveyard is filled with people the Worldkiller helped put into the ground.  
  
  
Somehow, Lena seems to know exactly what she’s thinking, because she squeezes Sam’s hand and brings her other one to cup Sam’s cheek, sympathy and understanding swimming in her green eyes.

  
“There’s still a CEO position open at the Metropolis branch. If you want it,” she says quietly.

  
She doesn’t bother giving Sam enough time to accept or refuse the offer immediately, squeezing her hand again before stepping back inside the office. Sam listens to her footsteps fading away as she leaves.  
  
  
Somewhere in the distance, she hears another siren pierce through the air. Sam shuts her eyes and leans back against the railing, alone on the balcony once again.

   
  


* * *

  
  
  
When she returns home after work that night, Ruby is already in bed when she checks on her, fast asleep. Sam leans heavily against the door, massaging her temples to fight against the growing headache that’s been nagging at her since her talk with Lena on the balcony.  
  
  
_There’s still a CEO position open at the Metropolis branch. If you want it._ _  
_ _  
  
_ She hasn’t been able to get Lena’s words out of her head since she heard them. The whole rest of the workday and even on the drive home, Sam had been distracted, unable to think about anything else besides the offer.  
  
  
But with that comes a sharp, almost crippling ache that spreads from her heart down her body, seeping into each limb, paralyzing her. Because leaving National City includes leaving _Alex_. It includes leaving Lena. It includes leaving behind the idea of a good, stable life she had thought she could give to Ruby, when they first moved here from Central City. Leaving behind the foolish belief that they would finally be able to stay in one place for once, that they would _make it_ here.  
  
  
Still, Sam knows that when it comes to this, Lena is right. She can’t stay here, haunted by the past. Not right now, while she’s struggling so hard to put herself back together with barely any solid foundation. There are too many pieces of her that have been scattered around National City since Reign, and Sam knows that trying to find them all would be a scavenger hunt that could only ever end in disappointment.  
  
  
She works almost on autopilot, reaching into her back pocket for her phone. It feels unusually heavy in her hand, holding the weight of her decision, and she lets the tears finally fall as she presses down on Lena’s contact. _  
  
_

“Sam?” There’s shuffling in the background, a door closing, and Sam assumes Lena has just walked into her office. “Are you alright? Do you need me to come pick—“

  
“No, Lena, I’m— I’m fine, I promise. I was just…” She clears her throat, blinks away the burning tears in her eyes. “I think I’m going to take that job in Metropolis.”

  
“Are you sure?”

  
Sam nods before realizing Lena can’t see her. “Yes,” she says, the words feeling final as they roll off her tongue. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  
It’s only once she hangs up that she sees Alex, standing in the doorway of Sam’s bedroom across the hall, watching her silently. Her arms are crossed, shoulders stiff, and Sam feels all the air rush out of her lungs at once.  
  
  
“Alex,” she breathes out, the name coming out tinged with sadness. “I…”

  
“We should talk in your room,” Alex tells her, and before Sam can even get another word out, she’s already turning back inside.

   
  


* * *

  
  
  
“I have to do this,” Sam says, pacing in front of the bed. She wrings her hands, regret and nervous energy bubbling up in her chest. Alex is sitting on the edge of the bed, legs crossed and hands unusually still in her lap. Warm brown eyes stare up at her, and Sam suddenly feels an overwhelming need to look away, away from the sad understanding in her eyes.  
  
  
_Understanding_. Sam certainly doesn’t understand it herself, how Alex could be so… _okay_ with this, how she could be so patient with her.  
  
  
“I can’t stay. I don’t feel like myself, and I haven’t felt like myself since the split. There’s too many reminders here, in National City. Everywhere I look, I see Reign, and I… I just need to get away for a while, and I need you to know—”  
  
  
Alex finally stands from her spot perched on the bed, stopping Sam’s nervous pacing by sliding two arms around her waist and cutting the rest of her sentence off with a brief, soft kiss.  
  
  
“Sam,” she says quietly once they pull apart, gazing up at Sam with a loving, albeit sad, smile. “It’s okay. You don’t ever have to justify yourself to me. If getting the hell out of National City is what needs to happen in order for you to heal, then I’m not going to stop you.”  
  
  
Her words lift a heavy weight off of Sam’s shoulders. She falls forward into Alex’s embrace, wrapping her arms around her shoulders and pulling her so close that the warmth of her body seeps through Sam’s own clothes. Alex’s chin fits right into the crook of Sam’s neck, and she breathes in as though to commit the smell of her to memory.  
  
  
“We’re not done here, though, you got that, Arias?” she says, making fresh, hot tears spring into Sam’s eyes. “We’re not. You’re going to get better, and then we’re going to pick this up right where we left off, okay?”  
  
  
“Yeah,” Sam agrees, nodding. She melts in Alex’s arms, letting the words curl around her heart, giving her hope. She will move on from Reign and get better, and she will come back to National City, and things will return to how they’re supposed to be.

  
“Hey,” Alex says. Then, when Sam doesn’t answer, she reaches up slowly to her face. “ _Hey_.”

  
It’s a careful touch at first, so careful she’s almost unable to feel it, if it weren't for the fact every cell in her body seems to be perfectly in tune with Alex Danvers in this moment. It's slow, agonizing. Two fingertips, soothing despite the callouses there, reaching up and brushing against her cheek, a gesture that’s just barely lighter than the warm breath sighed against her mouth.   
  
  
Every part of Sam _aches_. If nothing else around her feels real, _Alex_ surely does, and she wants nothing more than to keep them both in this moment forever. Every one of her nerve-endings are on fire, her entire body practically straining forward, desperate to be closer even though what was left of the gap between them dissipated the second they started holding each other.

  
“Alex,” she whispers, and her voice is so quiet, but Alex’s eyebrow twitches up. Sam ducks her head and stares at the floor with burning, watery eyes, wracked with guilt. “I’m sorry.”

  
The two fingers turn into a palm, sliding down the line of her jaw to cup her chin, lifting her head back up. A thumb traces a burning path over her bottom lip. “You don’t have to apologize for anything,” Alex insists, brows furrowed and eyes almost intimidatingly serious, the way they always are when she’s reassuring someone.

  
It’s hard for Sam to speak now, too overwhelmed with emotion, with the reality that she’s leaving all this behind, temporarily or not. This thing she has with Alex, and the life she could’ve had here in National City if it weren’t for Reign.

  
Alex shakes her head, and they’re pressed so close that their noses brush together at the action. “I love you,” Sam whispers, voice cracking slightly as she utters the three words.

  
Alex leans back, and Sam’s eyes fall shut as their lips press together again, moving softly and languidly against each other.

  
“I love you too,” Alex murmurs against her mouth. “That’ll never change.” 

 _  
Even if I’m not the same person I was before?_ Sam wants to ask, but she swallows the question and tries to pull Alex impossibly closer. They stay like that for a few long moments, soaking in each other’s presence, until Alex speaks up again.  
  
  
“How are you going to tell Ruby?”

  
Icy cold tendrils of dread wrap around Sam at the question. She blows out a harsh breath, looking up at the ceiling.

  
“I have no idea,” she admits honestly. She can already practically feel Ruby’s disappointment in having to move to another city all over again, especially now that she’s made so many friends at school and on her soccer team, and the quick bond she had formed with Alex soon after they met.

  
“Hey,” Alex pulls her from her thoughts. “Whatever you tell her, you've raised a good kid. I’m sure that she’ll understand why this needs to happen.”

  
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Sam mutters, before she can quite stop herself.

  
Alex looks at her questioningly, eyebrow cocked. “What do you mean?”

  
Sam sighs again, fully pulling away now; almost immediately her body misses Alex’s touch. She sits down on the bed, resting her elbows on her knees and dropping her head in her hands. She feels the bed dip as Alex sits next to her, a hand dropping down to squeeze her shoulder comfortingly.

  
“I’ve been hiding it from her,” she explains. “She thinks that things can easily go back to normal. That since Reign is gone, she has her mom back. She thinks that I’m better now. I didn’t want her to know that wasn’t true.” 

  
Alex wraps an arm around her shoulders. Sam leans in close, shaking her head. “I need to be strong for her. I wasn’t there for her during Reign, I couldn’t let her find out that I’m still… not all _there_. And now, moving her away once she’s finally started to feel like we belong here?”

  
“Sam, Ruby is a strong kid, and she’s a smart one too. And after what you went through? I don’t think anybody expects you to go back to normal, Ruby included. You don’t have to be so strong all the time. You’re allowed to not be okay.”

  
“Am I?” Sam asks on impulse.  
  
  
“Yes, you are,” Alex answers, shifting so that she’s sitting cross-legged in front of Sam. “And you’re allowed to do anything that you feel you need to do in order to be okay again. That includes moving away, and… I think you should go talk to Ruby about it. About all of it.”  
  
  
Sam sets her lips into a tight, thin line as she stands up from the bed. She knows that Alex is right, despite the way her heart clenches painfully in her chest at the thought of telling Ruby that even though Reign is gone, Sam has not completely come back yet.  
  
  
“If anyone can take it, Ruby can,” Alex points out.  
  
  
The teenager in question is still in a deep sleep when Sam peeks through a crack in her door, but the mop of messy brown hair quickly lifts from the pillow once she steps fully inside, eyes blinking blearily at her through the dark. “Mom?” she croaks out.  
  
  
“Hey, baby,” Sam whispers as she comes up beside the bed, leaning down to smooth back Ruby’s hair from her face. “Sorry I’m so late getting back from the office. Did you and Alex have a good time?”  
  
  
Ruby rubs at her eyes, sitting up fully. Sam takes a seat at the edge of her bed, letting the preteen shift so that she’s pressed up against her, her arm draped over Ruby’s shoulders. “Yeah. We watched Battleship again and Alex ordered pizza. We saved you a slice downstairs.”  
  
  
Sam feigns being impressed. “Oh yeah? How much willpower did _that_ take?” she teases, laughing softly when Ruby tries to push her away. “You didn’t give her a hard time though, right?”  
  
  
“No,” Ruby is quick to assure her. “I like it when Alex spends time at the house. I wish she’d come over more.”  
  
  
Sam can feel a pair of eyes on her. When she looks over her shoulder, Alex is watching them with a soft, sad smile on her face before she slips away from the door, and Sam exhales heavily as she turns back to address Ruby.  
  
  
“Actually, Rubes, that’s kind of what I came in here to talk to you about…”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
“You’re not allowed to go a day without calling me,” Lena says six weeks later as she helps Sam pack up the last of the boxes into the back of the car. Her eyes are glassy but proud, and she leans forward to hug Sam tightly. “I may not be your boss anymore, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore my calls now.”  
  
  
Sam chokes out a wet laugh as she hugs Lena back even tighter. “Yes, ma’am,” she replies.  
  
  
Lena smiles at her. Sam leans into her touch when she presses a soft kiss to her cheek, most likely leaving a splotchy red lipstick mark on her skin. “Call me when you get to Metropolis, okay?”  
  
  
“Of course,” Sam says, before stepping away and walking towards the driver's seat. Ruby sits in the passenger seat, talking to Alex, who has her head sticking halfway through the car window.  
  
  
“Say hi to Superman for me when you get there, okay, kid?” she asks, sticking her arm through the window to give Ruby a fist bump as the teenager nods and promises to text Alex updates about everything that happens to her while in Metropolis.

  
Sam smiles over Ruby’s head, catching Alex’s eye. Her girlfriend smiles back, and Sam can’t help but mouth, _“Thank you,”_ to her one last time before shutting the car door and turning the key in the ignition.

  
  


* * *

  
  


When they pass the sign telling them they’re finally exiting National City, Sam feels a whirlwind of different emotions, both good and bad. Relief and heartbreak rage a war inside her, and she tightens her grip on the steering wheel.  
  
  
She doesn’t look back.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not 100% satisfied in the ending but, oh well! i hope you guys liked it. i live for comments and kudos! :)


End file.
